P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

NEVER ON THE SALE RACK #3

THE PADRE WHO PRAYED

There was an interesting story on the front page of the sports section of the Los Angeles Times going back to 1998 right at the close of the World Series for that year. The baseball league championship series between the Braves and the San Diego Padres was still going on; in fact, they were heading into Game Six, in Georgia, with the Padres clinging to a 3-2 lead in games.  They’d grabbed three quick victories, but now the Braves had won twice.  Could it be that for the very first time in baseball history, a team could storm back from a 3-0 deficit and win?  That had never happened, but “America’s Team” was primed to do exactly that.

Well, all the weight of the world rested on the shoulders of a young man, 27 years old, named Sterling Hitchcock, the slated pitcher for San Diego in Game Six.  And he knew what was at stake; the Padres had a chance to go to the World Series for the first time in 14 years.  San Diego had never won a championship before, and in a few hours he was going to be pitching there in Turner Field with 50,998 screaming, tomahawk-chopping Braves fans.  He, Sterling Hitchcock, just a recent starting pitcher with a modest 9-7 record in the regular season.

And there in his hotel room at two in the morning, Sterling Hitchcock couldn’t sleep.  Which is understandable.  But I’m sure he had visions of Chipper Jones and Javy Lopez belting homer after homer right out of the yard.  Now it was two-thirty.  Still no sleep.  Andres Galarraga, “The Cat,” standing at the plate.  More homers.  More tomahawk-chops.  Ted Turner and Jane Fonda sitting in the front row while the Braves score 20 runs.  Can’t sleep.  Can’t block it all out.

Well, do you know what this young man did?  It’s reported right there on the front page of the Times.  He turned on a light, got out his Bible, and he read for a while from this old, old Book.  This Book that never goes on sale.  This Book we celebrate here during National Bible Week.  And he received from his reading there in the early, early morning, in his own words as he told secular reporters, “an unbelievable peace and calm.” 

Now friend, I’m not saying here that it was the Bible reading that empowered Sterling Hitchcock to go out the next afternoon and hold the Braves to two hits and zero runs in five innings of work.  I’m not saying that every time a person reads the Bible they’re going to win three playoff games and be named MVP of the National League Championship Series. I’m not saying that all people who read their Bibles are going to beat the Yankees in the World Series and become world champs.  But it’s clear that young Mr. Hitchcock found in this ancient Book some counsel and advice and comfort which still works here in the year 2000, some twenty centuries after it was written.

There’s an old verse which certainly had meaning to the man who wrote it; his name was King David.  So we go right to the Psalms, of course.  And you remember this one, either from chapter 119 or from a very modern radio hit by a lady named Amy Grant.  But here’s how David put it:

“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.”

Now, for a man who lived among the hills of Bethlehem, for a shepherd kid who had to shoo all the sheep into the fold during the twilight hour, those words would have meaning.  And Amy Grant and company must have thought they still had some meaning today; hence the popularity of that current gospel song.  But does it really?  Is the Word of God, here one day before Thanksgiving, in this world of skyscrapers and information superhighways . . . is this Book called Holy Bible still a light for our path? 

I remember that wrenching story which happened in the year 1980, where a Christian woman over in Australia, on a camping trip with her family, suddenly lost her infant daughter.  And the mother’s scream echoed throughout Ayers Rock: “A dingo’s got my baby!”  And then this follow-up cry of anguish: “Has anybody got a torch?  A light?  Has anybody got a flashlight?”

If you’ve heard dingo-and-baby jokes on secular television, and didn’t quite know what the humor was all about . . . well, it goes back to this most famous of media stories.  A mother crying out for a light because a wild dog had stolen and killed her baby.

In the Meryl Streep film telling the story, A Cry in the Dark, Lindy Chamberlain stands there in the darkness, knowing that her baby is almost certainly dead.  And where does she get strength? How can she face such a horrible reality?  If you remember the scene, she turns to someone near her and sadly remembers: “It says in the Bible that babies will be restored to their mothers’ arms.”  Meaning at the Second Coming, the resurrection. 

Here’s the point.  Lindy Chamberlain was looking for a light.  But then when the greatest despair a mom can know was threatening her, shredding her sanity, the Word of God was her REAL light.  Certainly the shadows were still there at Ayers Rock; the pain was so real.  But the Bible’s many verses promising a resurrection, guaranteeing the return of those we love, the reunion we all ache for — friend, those verses of Scripture weren’t obsolete to Lindy and Michael Chamberlain.

If you know this story, you recall how this Christian couple was later accused of murdering their own baby daughter; it was suggested that Lindy had slashed the throat of her baby and then covered up with a fabricated dingo story.  There was a huge murder trial that gripped all of Australia; it was the case of the century.  She was found guilty, and spent three years in prison before new evidence proved her innocence.  And reporters once asked the two of them: “How do you go on?  How do you cope?”  And it was Michael, played brilliantly by Sam Neill, who slowly told them: “The Lord Jesus Christ is a very real Friend to us, our Savior.”  And then he added something like: “The peace of God and the Bible have kept us from doing many foolish things in our own lives.”  Proof again that when things are unbelievably dark, when the whole world accuses you falsely, these words from Psalms aren’t a hit song on VH1; they aren’t just platitudes for people living in Palestine.  They’re for right here and right now and for people living at this very moment, a day before Thanksgiving.

You know, friend, mentioning that little baseball story the way we did reminds me of something I appreciate so very much about God’s Word.  Here it is.  The Bible always says the same thing.  I’ve already mentioned Psalm 119:105, but in all 66 books there’s a constancy there, a never-changing body of truth.  It’s so constant, so sure, so dependable.

You know, back during those playoffs between the Braves and the Padres, if you could be a time-traveler and just jump back and forth between games and read the various sports pages, you’d laugh yourself sick.  After San Diego won the first two games at Turner Field in Atlanta, every sportswriter in the country said: “That’s it.  It’s over.  The Braves are dead.”  Then when San Diego went up three and oh, they really piled it on.  There was black trim around the edges of the sports reports, like a funeral was about to happen.  Atlanta had no chance.  Zero.

Well, then the Braves jumped back and won game four.  Then game five.  And you wouldn’t think you were reading from the same newspapers.  Now Atlanta was hot; the Padres were demoralized.  The momentum had switched; the tide had turned.  An Atlanta upset was in the making for sure; Padre manager Bruce Boche might as well pack up his fishing gear and get ready for the off-season.  And of course, the tide turned right back around a third time when Padre pitcher Mr. Sterling Hitchcock, after reading his Bible, went out on the mound and shut the enemy down.  But the papers went back and forth, this way and that way, based on the flight of a baseball and someone’s cleats hitting home plate.  Braves are up.  No, San Diego.  No, Braves.  Actually, the Padres.  Back and forth, blowing in the wind.

But not here.  Not in God’s Word.  The Bible was a light for David’s path.  And for Daniel’s path.  And for Jesus’ path.  And for the path of a faithful Catholic monk named Martin Luther.  For Lindy Chamberlain.  For Amy Grant.  For me.  For you.  Every time you turn to Psalm 119, it says the same thing.  You turn to the Ten Commandments — they always say the same thing.  You turn to John 3:16, and the print in your Bible never changes.  The headlines don’t melt away when a new score comes along.  In the end of the World Series of Holy Scripture, Jesus wins and the Devil loses . . . every single time you peek in there.

I love the old story where the great Quaker writer Hannah Whitall Smith first discovered the powerful Bible truth about ASSURANCE of salvation.  Salvation was guaranteed!  And she’d never “gotten” that before.  How could she have missed it?  And the beautiful thing is this: she discovered that the Bible always gave that assurance; those promises were always there.  And here is her word-for-word pledge on the matter:

“From that moment the matter was settled, and not a doubt as to my being a child of God and the possessor of eternal life, has ever had the slightest power over me since.”

Isn’t that great?  And she went on to write the worldwide classic, The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life.  Talk about a way to celebrate Thanksgiving Day!